Read the Latest Issue of the Journal of Marketing!

The Journal of Marketing (JM) develops and disseminates knowledge about real-world marketing questions relevant to scholars, educators, managers, consumers, policy makers and other societal stakeholders. It is the premier outlet for substantive research in marketing. Since its founding in 1936, JM has played a significant role in shaping the content and boundaries of the marketing discipline.

The newest issue features fascinating research ranging from business-to- government relations to TV Advertising. Here are the abstracts of a few of these articles:

The authors hypothesize that customer presence in the boardroom of business-to-business (B2B) firms brings customer orientation and customer knowledge to the board of directors and thereby enhances B2B firm performance. Using an objective measure of customer presence in the boardroom and a sample of 329 B2B firms over a nine-year period, the authors find support for this hypothesis. Moreover, relying on the resource-based view, they hypothesize that the performance benefit of customers in the boardroom is contingent on the value, rarity, inimitability, and organizational fit of customer resources. Specifically, they find that a customer on the board is more effective when demand uncertainty is high but is less effective when the firm is highly diversified. Moreover, a board member who is an independent director of the customer firm is less effective than a board member who is an executive at the customer firm. The authors also find that research and development intensity partially mediates the relationship between customer presence on the board and firm performance.

Marketing managers and creatives alike believe that authenticity is an essential element for effective advertising. However, no common understanding of authenticity in advertising exists, and empirical knowledge about its impact on consumer behavior is limited. In this study, the authors use a comprehensive literature review and qualitative studies to identify four dimensions of authenticity in an advertising context. By examining 323 television ads across 67 brands and four years, they investigate these dimensions’ effects on the sales performance of advertised products. Because the impact of authenticity may depend on brand or product characteristics, the authors also analyze how these effects vary with brand size or across hedonic and utilitarian products. The results suggest that authenticity influences consumer behavior in a more nuanced manner than previously recognized. For instance, whereas an ad congruent with the brand’s essence has a positive effect on sales in most cases, an overly honest advertising message can actually hurt performance; the latter is true especially for hedonic products, for which consumers rely more on subjective information when making purchase decisions.

This article uses multimethod approaches to develop a conceptual foundation for and empirical evidence of the performance implications of business-to-government (B2G) relationships. In-depth interviews reveal unique characteristics that differentiate B2G exchanges from commercial exchanges (e.g., procurement mission; regulations and oversight; scale, scope, and planning horizon) and highlight the resultant cost–benefit trade-offs for firms in this environment. Empirical longitudinal analyses of secondary data show that a firm’s government customer emphasis (firm revenue dependence on B2G relationships) exerts a positive nonlinear effect on firm value but also increases firm risk (idiosyncratic and systematic). Government customer breadth and depth are two critical customer portfolio characteristics that moderate these effects. High government customer breadth creates more costs associated with an increasing government customer emphasis, mitigating the positive nonlinear effect on firm value. However, breadth provides diversification benefits that alleviate the increase in idiosyncratic risk that comes with greater government customer emphasis. Deep B2G relationships give firms key customer domain knowledge and insights, which help counteract the increased idiosyncratic and systematic risks of government customer emphasis. The authors discuss the implications for marketing theory and practice.

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About Cynthia Nalevanko, Senior Editor, SAGE Publishing

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